


I smelled no salt, I touched no sand

by SpaceJackalope



Category: Tales of the Second Citadel, The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Anal Sex, Dom/sub Undertones, Dream Sex, Dreams and Nightmares, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Oral Sex, Religion Kink, Smut, The Penumbra 2021 Valentacular Spectacular, Xenophilia, split tongue, there isn't literal body modification involved but non-standard anatomy that might evoke it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-13 00:35:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29393481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceJackalope/pseuds/SpaceJackalope
Summary: Fellas is it bi to dream about having sex with your patron saint who just wants you to be happy?
Relationships: Sir Damien/Saint Damien, background Sir Damien/Rilla
Comments: 6
Kudos: 18
Collections: The Annual Penumbra Valentacular Spectacular





	I smelled no salt, I touched no sand

**Author's Note:**

> It's Valentimesssss

Sir Damien slept poorly. It seemed he always did, of late, for how could he do otherwise? His cherished fiancée--vanished! Stolen! By as foul and curséd monster as ever trod the soil of these Eastern lands, a monster whose bedeviling and beguiling countenance likewise haunted Damien’s thoughts like a violet-eyed concubus, no, not a concubus, that would be...depraved...a, a, a, ohhhhh Muse of Poetry come to his aid! But even the Muse had left him cold and thrashing in his bedclothes, oh how he longed to sleep on furniture and not in the meagre comfort afforded him by camping gear, he would develop some esoteric disorder of the back and waste away before they ever reached Fort Terminus! Oh, Damien,  _ Saint _ Damien, come to his aid!

The knight twitched and jumped, disarraying his blankets, and blinked his eyes weakly in the sudden light. He felt for his weapon, but stopped when his surroundings registered. This was not the damp, verdant grove of the knights’ camp. He was in a small, round building with terra-cotta tiles beneath him and ornately muraled walls depicting the sea, with fisherfolk in boats near the ceiling, and marine life below. Sunlight poured in through a hole in the domed roof. The air had the same herb-rich, smoky scent as Rilla’s home, and Damien relaxed. He was simply dreaming; Saint Damien had answered his plea.

If he had awoken at the campsite, Marc and Talfryn would have been asleep on the other side of the cookfire’s ashes, and Angelo asleep a little ways from Damien’s back. He rolled over contentedly, relieved to be having a pleasant dream, and discovered that he was not indeed alone.

The figure was seated with his back to Damien, at roughly the same distance he would have expected to find Angelo, short nut-colored hair tousled, a blue cloak around their slim shoulders. Damien felt again for a weapon, shoving a hand under his pillow in search of a knife. The figure turned with a musical laugh. “Do I frighten you, my dear, that you would seek to stab me?” 

The fine hair on the back of Damien’s neck stood up as he registered that the voice was familiar. More than familiar--the stranger spoke with Damien’s own voice, the way it sounded in the internal monologue of his thoughts. “Who are you?” he demanded, but answered his own question without pausing: “Saint Damien.” He couldn’t imagine who else this could be, with his handsome face faintly glowing. The saint smiled, his teeth pearly and unnaturally straight. “This is a dream,” the knight concluded, relaxing. His voice sounds breathy and tentative to his own ears.

The saint tipped his head back and forth in a “more or less” gesture. “You said you were troubled, o petitioner of mine. Come, let us see what we might do about that.” Damien knee-walked to close the distance between them, biting back a laugh at his rapid slide from anxious half-sleep to this warm, quiet dream. He allowed Saint Damien to take both his hands into his own, starting only a little to realize in their closeness that the saint had violet eyes. He blinked those eyes in the slow, fixed way that cats do when they’re very pleased, and brought one of Damien’s hands to his lips. The knight burned for an instant with jealousy and pride over the novelty of being touched in a way he’d thought was reserved for fine ladies--pride at being singled out, jealousy that it was unlikely to happen to him again (although perhaps he could write a poem on the subject, trends were often inspired by the arts!)--and a little stab of something like embarrassment. He shouldn’t be enjoying this so much. He withdrew his hands. The saint raised a skeptical eyebrow.

“I, er, Saint Damien, I, I seek your tranquility because I find myself  _ consumed _ with fear and, well…” he dropped his voice to a whisper, “beset by lustful visions of the most inappropriate nature. Of rivals. Men.  _ Monsters. _ Along with the usual fare!” He cleared his throat decisively. “Something must be done! If only I knew what it was, but surely you, in your wisdom--” The saint silenced him with a firm kiss. “Oh!” Damien squeaked, so the saint kissed him again, more pointedly. The knight wondered vaguely whether it would be fair to call the kiss “possessive,” and concluded that his saint had a right to be possessive of him--and that if it was not too bold a thought, he rather preferred that he be so.

“You are thinking  _ far _ too much, beloved.”

“Sorry,” Damien mumbled, chasing his saint’s mouth. 

Saint Damien chuckled. “I only know one way to relieve yourself of lust, petitioner. And I’ve a fancy to see your handsome face when you’re beyond coherent thought at all.”

Damien squinted at him. “Is this a test?”

“Poor starved boy,” the saint replied, feather-softly, “it’s a blessing.”

The knight considered his saint’s beauty, and the Rilla-scented room, and the chocolate-dark, wine-dark, safe-in-your-own-bed dark promise in the voice that was and was not his own, and found that he was half-hard and blushing. “This is a dream,” he repeated, out loud. There were no consequences and no dangers, only his mind’s eye combining his preoccupations. But he did  _ want _ . “I. Um. Yes, please.”

The saint pulled Damien’s light shirt off his body with an alacrity that suggested it had personally offended him. Damien was delighted. He shifted cooperatively to allow his leggings and smalls to be removed with the same vigour, and then he found himself being prompted with surprisingly strong hands to lie on his back. The saint loomed over him, surveying his body like--Damien’s mind bloomed with similes. Like a pirate king inspecting a peerless jewel. Like a reveler snagging his favorite sweetmeat. Like Damien himself when he knew he had a perfect shot. He shivered. 

The saint ran both his hands along Damien’s body, from thighs to chest. Damien was hyper-conscious of every point of touch, and only now realized that the saint had six fingers on each hand. How very remarkable! How opportune, that Saint Damien could touch him all the more fully. He was being caressed in a methodical, experimental way that made him crave more, the saint finding his weak points and making Damien feel more  _ naked _ than nude.

The saint tapped his own lips in an exaggerated gesture of contemplating the possibilities offered by Damien’s body. “What ought I to do with you, sweet knight?” He did not wait for an answer. “Perhaps you need me to split you open and swallow you down, so we can find you a pearl to keep, hmm?” 

Damien looked away momentarily, tongue-tied. It wasn’t surprising that his dream-saint would offer what Damien himself wanted, but it was  _ different _ to hear those desires spoken aloud, both shaming and pleasing. “That certainly sounds like a plan to me,” he murmured, and peeked through his lashes in a way he knew Rilla liked. The saint looked smug, a familiar expression on unfamiliar features. Damien wondered who his thoughts had borrowed it from. He was staunchly pretending not to know from whence had come the violet eyes.

There were a lot of things he was trying not to think about, really. Sacrilege. Desiring men. Desiring  _ anyone _ . The peculiar masturbatory undertone of the likeness of their names and voices. What it said about him that he was happiest in bed if someone else took charge (or possibly if Rilla specifically did), as if the sharp contrast between fighting in duty and  _ being fucked _ in leisure gave his mind equilibrium. What it said about him that he felt frantic and ensnared most of the time to begin with. 

“Damien?” the saint probed, and Damien flexed his hands in agitation. 

“Touch me,” he begged, “and, and--give me something to do?”

Saint Damien kissed him again, purposefully messing up Damien’s hair and giving the curls at the nape of his neck a pull, steering his head back, seemingly only to demonstrate that he could and would manipulate Damien’s body without hesitation. Thrilled, Damien breathed deeply around the kisses, body turning pliant. When the saint released him, he flopped against the sheepskin he wasn’t convinced had always been there. “Happy?” the saint asked, around a gentle laugh. When Damien nodded, he took Damien’s right hand and guided it first to his lips, and then to Damien’s own prick. “Here, my archerfish. Don’t be koi.” 

Damien snorted, the stab of exasperation washing away the last of the artificial distance he had placed between them. He wriggled, trying to mask his laugh in an elbow, but nonetheless taking himself in hand at the same time. The saint laughed openly, caressing Damien’s thighs with little arcs of his thumbs. When the knight thought he had regained mastery of his voice, he asked “How do you want...” but no, his voice cracked, and he gasped the ending: “...me to do it?”

“Just like that. Slow, my dear, make yourself hard for me.” He grasped Damien’s thighs forcefully, rearranging his unresisting partner’s legs to be braced and spread, his entrance easy to reach. The saint sucked two of his own fingers into his mouth. Damien wondered, when those fingers were pressed against his vulnerable skin, whether it was the unfamiliarity or the fantasy that made the slickness feel more thick and utile than mere spittle, made the touch feel hotter and more significant than mere flesh, made his own body accept the intrusion with an ease that suggested he had practice at it, or had been formed with this use in mind.

He took a third and fourth slender finger, feeling righteously stretched in mind as well as in body, less frightened by himself now that the forbidden was coming to pass, and found to be...not so very unworthy of him, not if it sat so beautifully on a facsimile of his saint. The saint pet Damien’s cheek in a silent gesture of praise, and then he licked his lips, and his tongue was, was, was split or  _ twinned _ , two over-long, over-flexible appendages, slick with threads of saliva, the motion and texture inhuman as he licked his own palm.

It was pretty hot.

The saint stroked Damien’s cock with his hand, grinning in satisfaction at a hitch in the knight’s breathing. This expression’s origin was obvious. The first time Rilla turned it on him, he forgot the word for kebab. “Ready?” Saint Damien asked, and Damien assented almost before the word was out of his mouth. The saint raised a challenging eyebrow. 

“I--I think so. What’s the use in doubting? This is only a dream.” 

“Perhaps I care whether it is a good one, beloved.” He removed his cloak, the material sliding off his shoulders in a clinging ripple more like water than fabric, his body bare and, now that all his skin was offered to Damien’s eyes,  _ unquestionably _ glowing with a soft golden light. Damien kept his eyes to his partner’s face and limbs, worrying it would be boorish to stray too quickly to his, er,  _ parts _ or chest--or did men mind their chests being looked at?  _ He _ didn’t mind. The saint tapped Damien’s hip impatiently. “Come on,  _ I  _ want you to look at it.” Damien blushed, looked, looked rapidly away, and finally let his eyes come to rest, mouth falling open in disbelief.

It wasn’t  _ just _ the size that caught him off guard. Or the icy blue color. It was the shape of it, a wholly unfamiliar symmetry of smooth bumps and ridges he was sure no human could possess. He sighed a little, realizing he would have to unpack this later. “I don’t know how I dreamed you up,” he confessed. 

The saint preened. “You must have done something good, mustn’t you?” He winked. “My turn to do someone good, now.” Damien chuckled, half-burying his face in the sheepskin as his knees were lifted and hooked on Saint Damien’s shoulders. “Breathe nice and steady for me, now,” murmured the fisherman, sliding in with confidence--in his own body, and in Damien’s. The knight let his hands fall to his sides, gripping the soft material under him so he won’t clench them and mark his palms with fingernail-shaped indentations. 

He’d thought it might feel momentous, like he was doing something there was no coming back from, but all he felt was excitement and tenderness. When things were not so fraught, he’d find the words to bring this up with Rilla. He would like to do this with her, in the waking world. He moved his arms to hang about the saint’s shoulders, caressing his soft hair...and then Damien’s stroking fingers hit a different texture, a crescent of something behind one ear and down the back of his neck. He peered closer, vision slightly blurred from pleasure. Were those  _ scales _ ? They were, creamy delicate scales blending in with Saint Damien’s skin, forming a sort of collar around the column of his throat, reminding Damien of a portrait in the Citadel of a long-dead prince consort wearing jewels no longer in fashion for men. Now that he knew what to look for, Damien could see more patches of scales. Swirling around the saint’s thighs, sweeping across his forearms and calves where the knight would wear bracers and greaves, dotting his abdomen like shiny beauty marks. 

Damien was panting, overwhelmed. His dream-saint’s beauty and monstrousness stunned him, each quality intensifying the other, the enormity of his desire scorching his skin and setting his muscles a-trembling. His erection had softened somewhat, the pressure inside him too much to sustain such a height, but he had rarely been so aroused. He knew perfectly well what he sounded like, obscene and desperate. Did he look just as filthy? Did the saint like that? The fisherman’s eyes were half-shut, face nearly anguished, and still sinfully self-satisfied. Their eyes met, and Saint Damien laughed in peals at Damien’s awed face, inhaling sharply when the muscles in his own lower stomach tensed, and he came, spilling plentifully inside his knight. 

The knight, for his part, kissed the vision’s forehead sweetly, feeling inexplicably powerful. When the saint pulled out, smearing opalescent come on Damien’s thighs, he made eye contact with such hunger that the knight returned to full hardness, swallowing a lump in his throat. As promised, Saint Damien dropped to one elbow and swallowed Damien down, deeply, lavishly, pulling back and letting his twin tongues helix around the knight’s cock. It was a little disturbing. Damien loved it. When he climaxed, spilling into the saint’s fist, the fisherman hummed in delight and licked his own fingers, before turning his tongues to cleaning Damien’s stomach and inner thighs. 

He reclined next to Damien when he was done, brought their faces close together and touched Damien’s lips with a single finger. “Feeling better?”

The knight thought about it. “Feeling different. Not so, er, self-abusing.” He wiggled a little, happy and wobble-boned. “I feel good. Thank you very much, o lover in dreams.”

The saint smiled broadly, those eerily pearl-like teeth on full display, violet eyes sparkling. “I promised you something to keep, though. Something real, when all this has turned to mist and you are free to believe it was inconsequential, should you decide it is easy to grow in half-shade.” Damien started to ask a question, but the saint silenced him with a kiss. “Dear one, take this to heart: you are not singular. There is nothing you fear that nobody has feared before, and there is nothing to learn that you need learn alone.” Another kiss. “I think you know, deep inside, who  _ knows _ you, in the way that matters. Maybe you should make a list. Start with me.”

The knight studied the saint’s beautiful, monstrous, familiar, stranger’s face. “ _ Is _ this a dream? Or are you--did you--Saint Damien?”

The saint lowered his eyelashes modestly. “What is a dream but your thoughts waltzing with themselves? I merely offered myself to you in your time of need. Your mind did the rest.” He laced a six-fingered hand through one of Damien’s. “No, dear, this isn’t real--but that doesn’t mean it isn’t  _ happening _ . It is merely my very fond wish that you got what you needed out of it,” and Damien was astounded to see him blush. 

Damien cuddled against the saint and kissed the patch of scales behind his ear. He breathed deeply of the herb-smoke Rilla scent of the fisherman’s hair, and sighed contentedly. “I don’t know whether I did,” he admitted. “But it was something wondrous, and-and I am very grateful.” Then, shyly, he added: “I’ll keep you posted.” The saint laughed and embraced him, and Damien knew nothing but warmth and softness until he woke. 

He sat sharply upright. Having erotic dreams about his saint, foe, and fiancée rolled into a single entity was...a new one. It felt like a betrayal, but he wasn’t sure whom of. None of them, all of him, himself. Cranky and ashamed, he left the campsite to relieve himself. He reached for the closure of his trousers and started. On his right wrist, Damien wore a piece of stout workman’s twine, threaded through a single, perfect, pearl. “Fuck me,” he breathed, and the forest had no answer save the distant song of mockingbirds. Damien threw back his own head and laughed along with them.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to howlikeagod and FreudianCascade for their moderation of our tag weirding efforts for a third year!
> 
> I am also grateful to lesbian4lochness for her assistance with tagging tropes.
> 
> Title from "Fisherman's Wife" by Henriette de Saussure Blanding:
> 
> Wild white gulls were careening over  
> I heard no bees, I saw no clover
> 
> Sage was sweet where the black nets land  
> I smelled no salt, I touched no sand
> 
> You can follow me on Tumblr as cartograffiti!


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